Introduction Here is the gorgeous Barefoot Book of Classic Poems compiled and beautifully illustrated by Jackie Morris The poems here are classic because although their authors are no longer living they continue to shine brightly in the English language true stars As E V Rieu’s opening poem may suggest these are poems that persist in managing to be new This is an anthology for adults to rediscover for children to newly delight in and for both to share together It provides a place both magical and familiar for our imaginations to live in Some of the poems here are among the most enduring children’s poetry we have They are almost part of our DNA The Owl and the Pussy-Cat The Jabberwocky The Tyger maggie and milly and molly and may The rich illustrations to these familiar classics sing on the page too Shakespeare whose language remains the true expression of our psyche is here along with Milton Donne Byron and Wordsworth Their poems read as vividly now as in the gone days when they were written Sylvia Plath Stevie Smith and Kathleen Raine are as powerfully present as Elizabeth Barrett Browning timelessly counting the ways in which she loves There are poems from the unique geniuses of Walt Whitman
and Dylan Thomas whose glorious Fern Hill is the soul of childhood from the war poets Isaac Rosenberg and Siegfried Sassoon and from those formal masters Byron and Auden Throughout the book there are real treasures to be found There are surprising juxtapositions and deep echoes As with all the best anthologies the individual poems call and respond to each other across the pages and the ages Reading Jackie Morris’s selection what struck me forcibly was the truly human quality of the contents From birth when as Sylvia Plath says love sets us going like a fat gold watch through childhood to our relationship with the natural world our journeys love war belief and death the poems open up real and imaginary ways of seeing remembering or wondering Poetry of all the arts offers us moments in language that preserve or celebrate explore or lament transform or enhance our human joys and sadnesses The best of poetry is memorable as prayers are and in this wonderful selection of classic poems both young and older readers will find something that will stay with them or has stayed with them all of their lives CAROL ANN DUFFY
The Paintbox Spell of Creation The Beautiful Morning Song New Child The Twins Contents E V Rieu Kathleen Raine W H Davies Sylvia Plath George Mackay Brown Henry S Leigh maggie and milly and molly and may E E Cummings Bed in Summer The Land of Counterpane Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson A Boy’s Song A Spell for Sleeping Annabel Lee Dorothy Dances The Stolen Child The Wild Trees Tartary Cats Furry Bear The Man in the Wilderness James Hogg Alastair Reid Edgar Allan Poe Louis Untermeyer W B Yeats Laurie Lee Walter de la Mare Eleanor Farjeon A A Milne Anon 1 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 23 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 39 40
The Answers The Jabberwocky The Wild Swans at Coole The Tale of Custard the Dragon The Owl and the Pussy-Cat Something told the wild geese The Fish The Flower-Fed Buffaloes Oliphaunt Pegasus The Birds The Donkey Lobster Quadrille Lone Dog The Panther Amulet The Tyger Windy Nights Moonlit Apples Robert Clairmont Lewis Carroll W B Yeats Ogden Nash Edward Lear Rachel Field Marianne Moore Vachel Lindsay J R R Tolkien Eleanor Farjeon Samuel Taylor Coleridge G K Chesterton Lewis Carroll Irene McCleod Rainer Maria Rilke Ted Hughes William Blake Robert Louis Stevenson John Drinkwater 41 42 46 48 52 55 56 58 59 60 62 63 64 66 67 68 70 72 73
